© Paul Kolnik NYCB 'Jewels' reviews 'Jewels' reviews NYCB 'Emeralds' reviews 'Emeralds' reviews NYCB 'Rubies' reviews 'Rubies' reviews NYCB 'Diamonds' reviews 'Diamonds' reviews Mearns in reviews Stafford in reviews recent NYCB reviews more Eric Taub reviews Discuss this review (Open for at least 6 months)

Conducted methodically and a bit blandly by Maurice Kaplow, the company's principal conductor, this performance didn't quite sparkle as did the other Jewels I saw this spring, which reflected the emotional flair of Fayçal Karoui, the music director. Regardless, there was still much to admire. In Emeralds, Rachel Rutherford's first, invocational, seemed radiating from a quiet, cool pool within herself. Even as she curved and curled her arms like art-nouveau tendrils, she never lost that calm ambience. In the second solo, Sara Mearns glowed, sculpting the stage's space with her languorous, generous backwards trending balancés and bourrees. If Rutherford's solo seems to call up a magical fountain, Mearns', with its repeated little curteyish pliés on one leg look to be welcoming, if not us, some observing presence. Rutherford and Stephen Hanna made their duet into an languid reflection of Faurés waltz rhythms, while Mearns and Jonathan Stafford made the "walking" pas de deux into a waking dream, as Mearns flowed from one graceful position through another, even the trickiest of one-handed promenades, with no regard for the faithful Stafford, who with great sensitivity helped the radiant Mearns to shape each movement as if she were truly performing them all entirely alone. It's a glimpse into this woman's dreams, as much as it's also a manifestation of Mearn's unearthly beauty.

Alina Dronova, Ana Sophia Scheller and Sean Suozzi dashed through the pas de trois, with Suozzi measuring the stage with soft, catlike leaps, although he did have to improvise his way out of trouble at the finish of his solo. Hanna and Stafford both hit the right note of speed and softness, never more apparent in the grave, pacing finale of Emerald's concluding pas de sept.

Sara Mearns and Jonathan Stafford in Emeralds from Jewels
© Paul Kolnik

After the Kirov's sweet but too-tidy Rubies, I was happy to see City Ballet's surging rendition, almost naive in its lack of classical inflection and with its raw athleticism blanketing the stage with unaffected jazzy sexuality. Ashley Bouder was playful and sizzling in the lead, as was Joaquin de Luz, replacing Benjamin Millepied. Earlier this season, Bouder and Millepied were near-perfect together. On pointe, Bouder looms a half-head over the tiny De Luz, and, not surprisingly, she didn't hurl herself at him with quite the abandon she'd done with Millepied (it's bad form to knock one's partner over), but she made up for such circumspect moments with coltish attack elsewhere. It's been awhile since I've seen (and heard) a dancer's feet smack the stage with such percussive abandon (echoed by the good-humored De Luz), when she wasn't casually stepping into double pique pirouettes or striking hips-akimbo poses. Also playful, De Luz was a nonchalant aeronaut, playfully leading his coterie of four of City Ballet's highest-flying boys through leap after bounding leap, and spinning offstage in an ever-quickening vortex. Bouder and De Luz are born showmen, hamming it up just enough to ensure we catch some of their duet's subtler, but still shining, facets. As the big-girl demi, Teresa Reichlen was both an archetypical Balanchine dancer-cheerleader and a dancing stick of red licorice, flinging her rubber-hipped limbs about with casual, but calculated, abandon. Unlike the Kirov's magisterial Kondaurova, Reichlen's not a queen or goddess, just, like Bouder, an all-American girl who happens to be gifted with stupefying powers.

Diamonds started out unpromisingly. The ballet's first movement, set to the second movement of Tchaikovsky's Third Symphony, has the weakest choreography in Jewels, with the shimmering, white-clad corps and demis marking time before the big adagio. There is actually some structure among the meanderings, but Kaplow's plodding baton, where a bit of crispness wouldn't hurt, only emphasized the movement's fuzzy edges. All this changed in the mysterious, haunting adagio, where Kaplow delivered his tempo like a colorfully wrapped present to Wendy Whelan and Philip Neal. All long legs and longer (it seems) arms, Whelan thrives with slow tempi, and at those she's among the finest adagio dancers of her generation. But, more than many ballerinas, she needs those tempi to thrive she's got a whole lot of limb going on. Too many times in years past I've cried with frustration to see what might've been gorgeous Whelan adagios ruined by Andrea Quinn's impatient conducting. Here, Kaplow gave Whelan all the time she could handle, and she seized her moment, and danced magnificently. With her extra-slow, melting backbends and arabesques, Whelan made of the stage a canvas on which she limned in exquisite detail Balachine portrait of the ballerina: the queen and goddess we didn't need in Rubies. As the adagio progressed, Whelan and Neal grew in grandeur and radiance, as if they were savoring this memorable performance as much as the audience. Whelan looked to balance forever in a few arabesques, and I'll never forget a magisterial bourree to center stage, where she stood, motionless, in a tight sous-sous, awaiting Neal's attendance. This was a striking generous portrayal from Whelan and Neal, a reminder that even still Whelan can present even the simplest promenade as a world of silent meaning, and Neal' ardor as he knelt to kiss Whelan's hand has never seemed more completely appropriate, as Whelan once again earned our worship.

If the following scherzo seemed a bit pallid, and Whelan's allegro, stage-spanning little solos constrained by her declining technique, it hardly mattered, and the grand final polonaise might well have been a hymn to one of our generation's greatest ballerinas, however blind some influential local pages might be to her unique genius.